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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27970223">Victory</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/yhighon/pseuds/yhighon'>yhighon</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Dream SMP - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen, Manberg-Pogtopia War on Dream Team SMP (Video Blogging RPF), Suicidal Thoughts, basically when wilbur blows shit up, that moment</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 15:33:53</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,276</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27970223</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/yhighon/pseuds/yhighon</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Wilbur didn’t think he’d be here for victory. For a town that feels violated, that isn’t what he wanted it to be anymore. He can hear Tommy yell from far away, a victory against whoever he’s fighting.</p>
<p>The button sits there, mocking him. </p>
<p>(Wilbur blows up L'manberg)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Wilbur Soot &amp; Phil Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Victory</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The room was smaller than he remembered it. It was the first time he was actually seeing it, instead of just the button that lived on the far wall. Instead of just coming down to stare at the button in a half-manic state, fingers twitching, never going so far as to press it.</p>
<p>This time was different. The sounds of people fighting outside were distant, the sounds of fireworks and swords hitting shields echoing around him.</p>
<p>Pogtopia had won, and yet here he was. He still stood down in the button room (as he’d dubbed it), letting his fingers brush against the lyrics of the song they’d written on the walls. He’d put them there, taken a sharp object to it and scraped them into the wall so that they would be there.</p>
<p>(They would probably get blown up with the force of the blast, but that was okay.)</p>
<p>Wilbur stood there in agonizing silence for a moment, muttering under his breath as he sat in front of the button. </p>
<p>“What are you doing?” A voice came from behind him. Wilbur almost thought he hallucinated it.</p>
<p>“Phil?” Wilbur hadn’t heard that voice in a long time. Not since he and Tommy were exiled, two people against the rest of the government.</p>
<p>“What are you doing?” It came again, and if this wasn’t real, then it was nice of his brain to conjure it up for him. One last talk with his father before he offed himself.</p>
<p>“I’m not doing anything. We just won, actually. Tubbo’s the new president, Schlatt is dead.” Wilbur starts to ramble, to tell Philza about the war, about the fact that they just won. It was approval-seeking, but if he kept talking then Philza couldn’t ask too many questions.</p>
<p>“Where are you right now?” Philza asked, and Wilbur suddenly came back to the tiny room, with the button maybe a foot in front of him, the TNT that was stacked all over L’manberg calling to him, reaching out to push it.</p>
<p>“I’m in L’manberg,” Wilbur said, not quite a lie. “Y’know, geography, I don’t think you’ve been here before-”</p>
<p>“In L’manberg,” Philza repeated, and fuck, that sounded closer. Wilbur turned around and there he stood, leaning against the doorway, looking the same as when Wilbur had left. The same as the last time they’d talked. </p>
<p>“Phil,” Wilbur said, and it was almost too much. </p>
<p>“Wilbur.” Philza said carefully, unmoving from the doorway.</p>
<p>“Phil,” and here he could go, somehow lie his way out of this and leave with Philza and go find Tommy and celebrate their victory, but “do you know what this button does?”</p>
<p>“Uh huh, I do.” He answers, and his voice is painfully even, “I know exactly what it does.” </p>
<p>“Have you heard the song on the walls? I wrote it on there, put emphasis on the ‘was’, because L’manberg was a place for men to go, but it isn’t anymore.” Wilbur says, wistfully staring at the crudely carved words on the wall. If he’s going to die here, he has to make sure Philza knows the story, has to tell him what really happened.</p>
<p>“It is. You just won it back, Wil.” Philza says carefully, choosing his words. </p>
<p>“Phil, I-” The man takes a step closer, smiling at him. Wilbur’s breath catches in his throat. “Phil, I’ve been here, in this room, with this button, so many times. I’m always so close to pushing this button, Phil.” </p>
<p>And he is. Has been. The button has always been in the back of his mind, always a what-if. What if they didn’t win the war against Schlatt, and win back L’manberg. What-if someone betrayed them, just like Eret when they were fighting for independence.</p>
<p>Wilbur didn’t think he’d be here for victory. For a town that feels violated, that isn’t what he wanted it to be anymore. He can hear Tommy yell from far away, a victory against whoever he’s fighting.</p>
<p>The button sits there, mocking him. </p>
<p>“The button might not even work anymore.” Wilbur says, and he isn’t sure whether he wants it to work or not. To blow up what he’d worked so hard for. To leave it crumbling into dust, just as Wilbur himself is.</p>
<p>“There’s a lot of TNT behind that button.” Philza says, coming forward to hug Wilbur, his jacket feeling the same as when Wilbur last hugged him. Wilbur can feel tears prick behind his eyes, and his throat is scratchy, but he pushes it down. “Are you sure you want to do that?” He laughs, and Wilbur stares at the button, his fingers flexing in and out, in and out.</p>
<p>“I do.” Wilbur admits, pulling away, standing closer to the button than he has since creating it. He’s never allowed himself to get this close, always holding himself back in the fear that he’d press it, in a moment of weakness.</p>
<p>What it says about him now, closer than ever before, he doesn’t want to know.</p>
<p>“There was a saying, by a traitor, I don’t know if you’ve heard of him, Eret?” Wilbur says, and Philza nods, watching him carefully. </p>
<p>“Mm-hm.” </p>
<p>“It was never meant to be.” Wilbur says, letting his hand gently push the button. Philza stares at him, and the TNT is already going off, and Wilbur feels nothing but victory.</p>
<p>Wilbur takes a few hits from the building going up, but Philza pulls him away from the edge, shielding him with one of his wings. Wilbur is almost disappointed to not be going up with it.</p>
<p>L’manberg goes up in a giant bang, and all Wilbur feels is victory.</p>
<p>“My L’manberg! My unfinished symphony, forever unfinished!” Wilbur says, an uncontrollable mania bursting from him, into the unbroken half of the room, as Philza stares at him in horror.</p>
<p>“Oh my god.” Philza says, and Wilbur stares out into the battlefield, watching as everyone has stopped fighting and instead turns to watch them. He makes eye contact with Tommy, and suddenly, he can’t take it anymore.</p>
<p>“Phil, kill me.” He says, and Philza looks at him in even more alarm. </p>
<p>Wilbur wasn’t supposed to get this far. Everything he’d worked for, everything he’d done, and he never expected to actually get this far. </p>
<p>Memories of sitting in his room, poison in hand, resurface. Every time that happened, he would come to stare at the button again, standing at the same place in the doorway that Philza had. If he went any closer, he would’ve hit the button, and let himself die with L’manberg. Allow himself to be blown to pieces with the town he’d given so much for.</p>
<p>So it’s only natural that he dies with the button.</p>
<p>“Kill me, Phil. Do it. Do it!” Wilbur says, and Philza backs up a few steps. </p>
<p>“You’re my son!” Philza says, and Wilbur wants to laugh in his face.</p>
<p>“Kill me!” Wilbur says, thrusting a diamond sword into his hands. His fist hits the wall, starting to bleed as it hits a broken piece of stone.</p>
<p>The others, paused in fighting, watch. Watch as Philza thrusts the sword into their leader’s abdomen, watches as Wilbur bleeds out on the floor. He doesn’t think he’s ever seen Philza cry before.</p>
<p>It’s relief. The relief that he doesn’t have to keep doing this, that he doesn’t have to keep going. </p>
<p>Relief that it wasn’t his hands that finally brought him down. Waiting so long, late nights with assorted ways to die laid out in front of him, because even the thought was enough to keep him going.</p>
<p>He bleeds out on the floor, Philza’s hands holding his, and he finally dies.</p>
<p>A victory for everyone.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>yeah this is mostly a vent for my own suicidal thoughts, bc life is pain and i really like this moment in the war. stay safe, don't kill yourself, have a good day/night</p></blockquote></div></div>
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